SteamEarly Access originally launched in 2013 as a way for developers to get their fledgling games in the hands of players, securing some extra funding and opening a channel for development feedback.
While there have been more than a few Early Access games that have languished on the vine for years on end with no end in sight, the program has also led to the release of plenty of quality games, shored up by consistent, open dialogue between developers and early adopters.
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While I try to maintain a bit of a personal policy of not buying Early Access games, as I prefer them to be finished already, I admit it’s hard to resist that temptation sometimes. There are some games on Steam that, even if they’re not technically done yet, absolutely demand to be played.
Whether they’ve only entered Early Access recently or have been in the oven for a good while, there are at least a few Early Access games that are worth experiencing, even in their incomplete state.
10Ultrakill
More Guns, More Speed, More Blood
It’s one thing to make an action game that’s fun, but it’s another thing to make one that’sfast. Making a high-speed action game, not unlike Devil May Cry, requires a lot of careful fine-tuning to maximize the impact while still being consistently playable. If ever there were a game that rides right up on the edge of that delicate balance, it’d beUltrakill.
Ultrakill is a love letter to both character-action games and high-speed, ultraviolent FPS games, merging the genres together into a whirlwind of blood and bullets. With an array of guns and fancy movement abilities, you need to blast your way through cramped confines while endeavoring to never take a single bullet yourself.
It’s a very intense experience, one that demands the highest-quality performance you can muster. I admit, I’m not the best atachieving consistent style scores, but I’m not deterred by that because the moment-to-moment gameplay is so punchy and speedy that I’m always down to go around again.
Ultrakill is a game that asks, nay, demands you hurl yourself into a proverbial food processor, and you’ll do it with a smile on your face.
Just Like Its Older Sibling
Fextralife Wiki
As a diehard fan ofSupergiant Games, I bought the original Hades pretty much right at the start of its Early Access period, knowing in my heart that it was going to be the next big thing. Guess what? I was right, and that’s why I felt justified in buyingHades 2at the start ofitsEarly Access period, which I’m fairly certain will yield similar results.
Hades 2, like its predecessor, is a roguelite dungeon-crawler where you play as Zagreus’ long-lost sister, Melinoe, off to kill the Titan of Time, Chronos. Unlike Zag’s weapon-based combat, Melinoe makes use of both weapons and magic, combining spells and melee attacks into a symphony of bursts and zaps.
I played Hades 2’s original launch build for about 15 hours before forcing myself to stop, just so I can experience the game in its proper, finished state when it’s done. Just from that relatively brief glimpse I got of new characters, new mechanics, new bosses, and new quests, I already know for certain I will never see the light of day again when this game is finished.
Odin Demands Consistent Crop Yields
It might be my imagination, but I feel like Norse mythology has been showing up more in popular culture lately. It’s not a bad thing; no one throws down like Odin and his wacky family, and the Norse vikings were no slouches either.
You combine ancient magics and beefy dudes, you’re naturally going to get a good game setting. Throw a little open-world freedom into the mix, and you’ve gotValheim.
Valheim is the ultimate magic viking simulator, placing you and your friends in the roles of mighty sea warriors set adrift in the eponymous purgatorial realm.
you may get up to the usual magic viking shenanigans, like slaying monsters, eating whatever stuff you find on the ground, andsmithing cool weapons, but there’s a remarkably elaborate base-building system serving as the bedrock of all that.
The vikings knew a thing or two about survival after all, and with your Norse spirit, you can build a home for yourself, plant and cultivate crops, and get up to other efforts that feed back into your realm-trotting adventures. Work hard, quest hard; that’s what they say.
More Than Just “Pokémon With Guns”
I still remember the media whirlwind that accompanied the announcement ofPalworldin 2021. The idea of a Pokemon-like setting where you could arm your critters with realistic guns or enslave them on a production line felt like a daydream a teenager doodles in a notebook, something that would never actually see the light of day. It’s quite real, though, and it’s only getting crazier as time goes on.
Palworld is a combination of a Pokémon game and an open-world survival game, kind of like Legends: Arceus if it took the kid gloves off. A big part of the game is capturing and raising creatures known as Pals, but it’s not as simple as sticking them in a ball and forgetting about them.
You need to feed them, give them a place to sleep, show some affection once in a while, and maybe teach them to hold a rifle, if you’re into that.
To facilitate Pal raising, you need to build a base, plant crops, hunt down resources in the wild, and plunder dungeons for rare items and stronger Pals. The original EA build was a bit rough around the edges, but development is ongoing, with new fixes and features coming out at a steady clip.
6Fallen Aces
A Playable Pulp Detective Story
Fallen Aces
I love a good pulp detective story, full of grizzled roughnecks, dingy downtowns, and bare-knuckle brawls. It’s just a great setting for telling a story, and frankly, an underutilized one for gaming. That’s why I swiftly found myself drawn to Fallen Aces, an FPS styled after a noir detective comic book with a little pinch of immersive sim baked in.
Fallen Aces is reminiscent of the classic FPSes of the early 90s like DOOM or Wolfenstein, using large, sandbox levels populated with 2D character sprites rendered in 3D. While the presentation seems simple, there’s quite a bit cooking under the hood.
The game has a nonlinear progression to its levels, which means you can take any number of approaches, like running out guns blazing or subtly sneaking around.
As a born-and-raised northeasterner, I particularly love the many slang-packed interjections from mooks as you’re pummeling on them. Any game that has a character unironically say “fuggedaboutit” is a game worth playing in my book. The game is slated to have three episodes, with only the first done at the time of writing.
5The Coin Game
The Infinite Arcade Of Your Dreams
Anyone of a sufficient age definitely has at least a few cherished memories of whiling a day away in an arcade. The purple carpet, the flashing lights, the junk food; it was a place where a kid could forget all semblance of responsibility and maturity for a time.
Arcades are, sadly, a dying art compared to a few decades ago, but they live on both in our memories and the extensive efforts of The Coin Game.
The Coin Game is a painstaking recreation of just about every kind of young folk entertainment center you may think of, including an arcade, a bowling alley, a mini-golf joint, a laser tag place, a mall, and much more.
This entire island of locales is jam-packed with copyright-safe knockoffs of classic arcade distractions like medal pushers, stacking games, and Skeeball. I have spent hours just trying to play that ball dropping game, with no concern for my dad’s wallet.
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Does anyone have a quarter? I got a Game Over!
The game has two modes: if you just want to bum around and play games, you can play in birthday mode with an infinite credit card and no hunger meter. If you want a challenge, there’s a survival mode where you’ll have to get tokens, tickets, and money to keep yourself fed with snacks.
4Rhythm Doctor
The Only Prescription Is Fresh Beats
Rhythm Doctor
Have you ever seen an emergency worker perform CPR, particularly the part where they perform chest compressions? It’s not as simple as just pounding on someone’s chest; you need to press down on their heart in a very particular rhythm to keep their blood safely circulating. Good, timely rhythm is vital, and if you don’t have a sense of rhythm, you might just get out of Rhythm Doctor.
Rhythm Doctor is a rhythm game in which you need to help various patients by defibrillating their hearts in time with the backing track. You’re supposed to hit the switch on every seventh beat, but every heart is a little different. Specifically, every heart has its own tempo, rhythm, and unusual conditions that make hitting that seventh beat a little bit trickier.
Besides being a generally fun rhythm game, Rhythm Doctor is a surprisingly comprehensive teaching tool for music theory, mixing up different, obscure forms of musical progression to challenge you.
It’s a great way to teach yourself to carry a beat, not to mention cheaper than med school. The story mode is still in development, but there’s already a level editor available for making your own levels.
3White Knuckle
Roguelite Bouldering
White Knuckle
Bouldering is a fun and healthy way to spend your time. It’s less intense than climbing up a rope in gym class, and if you fall, there’s a helpful harness to catch you. If you find bouldering to be too easy, though, there’s always free-climbing up the side of a mountain. But if that’s still too straightforward, then how about free-climbing up the inside of a metal silo above a bottomless pit?
White Knuckle is a roguelite game with a fairly straightforward concept: climb or die. You need to free-climb your way up the inside of a gargantuan structure, making use of your own momentum and upper body strength to launch yourself between handholds as you try to scramble to safety.
There are various items you can use, like safety ropes, as well as after-run upgrades to your body. But if you overburden yourself with gear, you won’t be able to lug yourself up.
I think what I like best about White Knuckle is the palpable sense of dread it induces while you play it. It’s a horror game, make no mistake, but it’s not just the thought that there’s something climbing up behind you that makes it scary. It’s the knowledge that you’re never more than one missed handhold from tumbling into its jaws.
2Schedule I
Schedule I
I admit, I’ve never been the biggest fan of drug trade crime dramas, just because of how bleak they tend to be. I like my media with a little levity, what can I say? Perhaps, if those shows all had characters that all looked like googly-eyed bobble heads like in Schedule I, though, I’d be a little more enthused about them.
Schedule I is a sandbox simulator game where you attempt to stake your claim in a crappy city’s underground drug trade. It’s not all dramatic shootouts and betrayals; you also have to manage the day-to-day of your operation, including actually growing anddeveloping your “product”and finding prospective buyers on the street.
Of course, there arealsoplenty of shootouts with the occasional rival gang or police raid, if you were still hoping for that.
The big appeal of Schedule I, and this was what got it on everyone’s radar when it launched in Early Access, is its co-op multiplayer element. You and your friends can run your entire criminal enterprise in co-op multiplayer without anyone having to worry about taking the fall for a botched deal.
1Beastieball
Creature Collection Meets Competitive Sports
As indie devs have become emboldened to create their own take on the Pokémon concept, we’ve also seen an interesting subset of games taking creature collecting in new and interesting directions. You don’t necessarily need to gather up a bunch of little critters just to slap them against each other; what if you pitted them against one another in two-on-two volleyball?
Beastieball is a turn-based RPG that hybridizes creature collection and sports management games. As a coach, you gather Beasties for your fledgling team and have them compete in tactical, turn-based volleyball against opponents.
It’s all about synergizing; you need to use your Beasties’ turns to set up powerful shots or shore up your defense, keeping both your team’s and your opponents’ stats in mind.
Unlike in some creature collectors, where your minions exist in a vacuum, your Beasties will form bonds on court. They can become friends, rivals, or even lovers, spurring each other toward new combos and capabilities. It’s like creating your very own Shonen anime power duo (or power couple).
